Music Magazine - Case Study

Billboard Magazine Company Analysis 
A version of Billboard magazine has been around since 1894, and was thought of by William h. Donaldson and James Hennegan and this time music wasn’t in the equation and Billboard was initially just a bill posting service, it wasn’t till later when they decided to start publishing news about outdoor amusement parks. Then in the 1900`s when the motion picture industry was born they decided to start coverage on that. It wasn’t until the 1920`s when the radio was introduced that they started covering something to do with music, this however developed further in the 1930`s when the jukebox came into play and they finally decided to make Billboard into a magazine. They continued to cover outdoor amusement parks and in the 1950`s TV. They however had been publishing music charts since 1936 but it wasn’t until the 1960`s until it took on its modern form, cutting off from TV and amusements park division they changed their name to Billboard Music Week and were initially devoted to the music industry. In 1963 they decided to change their name once again to just Billboard, of which still stands today. From 1961 the magazine had been covering the official ranking of the Billboard top 100 songs which are still a main feature of today’s version of the magazine. Although from the 1940`s they have been keeping a record of music sales and air play.
Billboard magazine covers a wide range of genres that are suited to just about every person creating a wider target audience, some of the genres are covered in charts like:

• Artist 100
• Pop
• R & B / Hip Hop
• Country
• Rock
• Latin
• And many more

Billboards Magazine target audience is mainly teenagers with 68% being college graduates and 25% being post graduate’s, there is a small percentage that have an average age of 37. Their printed magazine is more suited to males with 77% being male and only 33% being female. However their online audience is 57% female and 43% male. Billboard have made there magazine available on many multiplatforms including the internet and apps that are available on a range of Apple devices. To keep in touch with their fans over the years they have widened their range of social media usage and now send out newsletters and are on a number of social media sites like:

• Facebook – 4.5m Followers
• Twitter – 2.6m Followers

• Instagram – 800k Followers
• YouTube – 560k Subscribers 
• Google + - 4.5m Followers
• Pinterest – 12k Followers

Furthermore with this they are constantly keeping in touch with their fans with following more than 12 m back and also by newsletters and a live twitter feed on their website.
Billboard also sponsor many events this creates more awareness of the magazine even though they mainly distribute within America they still have around 5% of international orders from countries like Brazil. 
Some events they sponsor are:

• Billboard Touring and Conference Awards
• Billboard Power 100
• Billboard Latin Music Conference Awards

As far as yet Billboard don’t have any music channels themselves but they have had their own TV programmes or participated in others.